to the palate or stomach.

163. ALLIUM Porrum. LEEK. The Root. L.--This participates of the virtues
of garlic, from which it differs chiefly in being much weaker. See the
article ALLIUM.

164. ALLIUM sativum. GARLIC. The Root. L. E. D.--This pungent root warms
and stimulates the solids, and attenuates tenacious juices. Hence in
cold leucophelgmatic habits it proves a powerful expectorant, diuretic,
and emmenagogue; and, if the patient is kept warm, sudorific. In humoral
asthmas, and catarrhous disorders of the breast, in some scurvies,
flatulent colics, hysterical and other diseases proceeding from laxity
of the solids, and cold sluggish indisposition of the fluids, it has
generally good effects: it has likewise been found serviceable in some
hydropic cases. Sydenham relates, that he has known the dropsy cured by
the use of garlic alone; he recommends it chiefly as a warm
strengthening medicine in the beginning of the disease.

Garlic made into an unguent with oils, &c. and applied externally, is
said to resolve and discuss cold tumors, and has been by some greatly
esteemed in cutaneous diseases. It has likewise sometimes been employed
as a repellent. Sydenham assures us, that among all the substances which
occasion a derivation or revulsion from the head, none operate more
powerfully than garlic applied to the soles of the feet: hence he was
led to make use of it in the confluent small-pox about the eighth day,
after the face began to swell; the root cut in pieces, and tied in a
linen cloth, was applied to the soles, and renewed once a day till all
danger was over.

165. ALLIUM Cepa. ONION. The Root. D.--These roots are considered rather
as articles of food than of medicine: they are supposed to afford little
or no nourishment, and when eaten liberally they produce flatulencies,
occasion thirst, headachs, and turbulent dreams: in cold phlegmatic
habits, where viscid mucus abounds, they doubtless have their use; as by
their stimulating quality they tend to excite appetite, attenuate thick
juices, and promote their expulsion: by some they are strongly
recommended in suppressions of urine and in dropsies. The chief
medicinal use of onions in the present practice is in external
applications, as a cataplasm for suppurating tumours, &c.

166. ALTHAEA officinalis. MARSH-MALLOW. The Leaves and Root. L.--This
plant has the general virtues of an emollient medicine; and proves
serviceable in a thin acrimonio